Name: Product Update Briefing - YourCause® GrantsConnect®
Uploaded: 2025-11-19T17:30:31.890Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min 56 s
Description: Product Update Briefing - YourCause® GrantsConnect®

Transcript for "Product Update Briefing - YourCause® GrantsConnect®": Good morning or good afternoon from wherever you happen to be joining us today, and welcome to our Grants Connect fall product update briefing. If we haven't had the chance to meet before, my name is Kayla Barnes. I do product marketing across our your cost solution set. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I've been with the company for a little over eight years now. Hi, everybody. I'm Meg Radford. I'm the senior product manager for Grants Connect, and I've been at BlackRock for about four years. And I'm Andrea. I'm the head of your cause product, and I've been at Blackbaud for about two and a half years. Hi, everyone. I'm Sarah Anderson, shehers, and I'm on our customer success enablement team here at your cause from Blackbaud. I've been here for six year now six years now working for incredible organizations just like yours. Awesome. Thanks so much for those introductions. So we can't wait today to tell you how we are driving impact across our your cost solutions. Really zooming in to Grants Connect today, but we're innovating with more in mind across our product set, including how we can help you reach more communities, prove the ROI of your efforts, and engage more employees. So this applies across our portfolio, including not only Grants Connect, but also with employee giving and volunteering in CSR Connect and reporting with Impact Edge. Here's a quick look at the lineup for our product update sessions this week that are aligned to our your cost solution. So we kicked off yesterday, and we'll wrap up tomorrow. And, obviously, today's session will cover Grants Connect, our corporate grant making solution. You won't wanna miss tomorrow's session, which is all about Impact Edge and Impact Reporting, and you can actually find a link to that in the doc section on the right hand side if you haven't had a chance to register yet. And as always, if you register to attend any session, you will be sent a link to a recording of that session within twenty four hours. So even if you can't join us tomorrow live or you missed yesterday's session on CSR Connect, I still highly encourage you to go ahead and register to attend so that you can receive that session recording link to watch on your own time. For today, here's a quick look at what to expect. I'll start off with setting the stage and sharing some recent announcements, and then our product team will really spend the bulk of today's session talking through our road map conversation. And this is gonna include a deep dive into features that have been recently released since we last chatted in the spring, features that are coming soon, and some longer term vision casting, for Grants Connect solution. And then finally from there, Sarah from customer success enablement will wrap us up, with some quick customer callouts. A couple of quick housekeeping items. So today's webinar is being broadcast through your Internet browser. So if you have any trouble with audio or with slides lagging, highly encourage you to do a refresh on your browser. And if there's any persistent issues, we do find that this webinar solution tends to prefer Chrome, or Edge over Safari, so you might consider switching your Internet browser. On the right hand side, you'll see a couple of links that I'll call out. One is a chat. This chat is not open to, all attendees, but it is a spot where your speakers can push a message just in case we need to highlight something for you all. To the right of that, you'll see the docs tab, which we have stored a lot of great links and resources that we'll reference throughout today's presentation. One that I'll go ahead and call out is the companion guide, which should be that first link that you see on that doc section. This is a great tool that summarizes what we're talking about today, both for recently released and coming soon features, and it's just kind of a great takeaway, item that you can use to reference today's material. And then to the right of that, you have our q and a tab. For q and a, we will be moving quickly through a lot of content today. So I do ask that if you, pose a question to the team, we're happy to answer it. We just would love to see a little bit of context behind your question. So instead of asking a vague question like, when will this be released or when is that coming, just give us a little bit of context to which specific feature you're talking about. And if we don't have time to get to your question today, just know that we'll be following up with you individually after the session concludes. Because this is one of our product update briefings, I do need to read the following safe harbor statement in its entirety. This presentation contains forward looking statements that involve inherent risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. It outlines Blackbaud's current plans and general product direction as of the date this presentation was created. Functionality described in this presentation that is not currently available is subject to change at any time without notice at Blackbaud's full discretion. It does not represent a commitment to develop or release specific features within the time frame discussed according to the presented design or at all. Please make any purchase decisions based on features and functionality that are currently available. Before I pass it off to Andrea and the team to really get into the road map conversation, I do wanna highlight a couple of exciting announcements that have been made recently, a couple of which we'll talk about a little bit later today in today's presentation. So if you missed it, we have announced the dates and open registration for our North American Corporate Social Impact Summit. Our inaugural convening of CSR professionals earlier this year in Dallas was such a big success, and we had another great event across the pond this year in London. So I'll spend a couple of minutes talking to you about summit, here momentarily. We also made another exciting announcement last month at bbcon NPO Connect, our free nonprofit portal tied to the your cost solutions, is now Blackbaud verified network. There's a great article linked in the doc section, that will really give you details about why this is more than a name change and how Blackbaud verified network is poised for a new era of innovation that connects corporations and benefiting nonprofits. And this is gonna include things like upcoming donor detail integrations and our expedited giving functionality, which we'll talk about a little bit today as well. And I'll leave the last two exciting announcements for our product team to share more details on, and that includes our live integrations with True Impact and Candid and Impact Edge as well as our brand new AI Coalition for Social Impact. So another quick announcement about the NPO Connect name change is we're so excited about this new era as the Blackbaud verified network that we actually have a contest up and running for nonprofits to enter to win right now. So to celebrate the Blackbaud verified network, we are giving away five $1,000 donations, to nonprofits that are part of the network. So to be eligible to enter to win, nonprofits just need to fill out the form that they can access through the QR code that you see on your screen now, and then they just need to have an admin on file in Blackbaud verified network. So if they already have an existing NPO Connect profile and admin, that counts, and you're eligible to go ahead and enter to win if you have that existing admin, or you can enter to win and create that admin on file by November 28. That is when the contest will close, and we'll be communicating winners early in December. So highly encourage you if you're a nonprofit on the line today to enter to win, or if you're a corporate social responsibility professional, pass on the good news to the nonprofits you work with and encourage them to enter as well. And before I pass the mic to Andrea, I just wanna spend a quick moment talking to you about our corporate social impact summits. These summits are designed exclusively for professionals who are working at companies to engage employees in giving and volunteering or manage community investment programs like you all through Grants Connect. And next year's summit will be in Nashville, Tennessee from Monday, March 30 through April Wednesday, April 1. And I just got back last night from spending the first half of this week touring some of our sites, scouting out some additional fun locations. And trust me, you are not gonna wanna miss this event. It's gonna be a good one. So you can expect a similar flow of events in Nashville as Dallas if you joined us earlier this year for our first, North American Corporate Social Impact Summit. So that format will look like a welcome reception on Monday evening followed by a day and a half packed of content on Tuesday and Wednesday. Content and fun too. We are already at 50% of our registration capacity, so I highly encourage you if you are interested in attending to reach out to your customer success manager, reach out to your sales manager, maybe throw us a a question in the q and a if you're a CSR professional working at a corporation that is interested in attending this event. And while we don't have registration open quite yet for our summer event in The UK for our, UK Corporate Social Impact Summit, I do have a date for you to save across the pond. So we will bringing be bringing that event back on Tuesday, June 16. And while that is just a one day event, it is so packed full of great content, great networking opportunities, so much great collaboration that happens in that room. So highly encourage you to save the date for that event as well. And with that, I am so excited to pass it to Andrea to tell you a little bit more about our new AI Coalition for Social Impact. Thank you so much, Kayla. I am very excited that the first thing I get to share with you today is about the new AI Coalition for Social Impact. As a part of our commitment to responsible AI, Blackbaud has convened a coalition of companies, organizations, and leaders who share the vision of removing obstacles to responsible AI adoption for the social good sector, including several leaders in our corporate impact space like Realize Worth, CCP, and ACCP. The Coalition's flagship initiative is going to be a free platform agnostic AI for social impact certification course designed specifically for the social impact sector. The first module in AI for social impact will be open for registration later this year. I personally am so excited about this and how we are helping to lead the charge to harness AI for social good. We also, at YourCause, from Blackbaud, have a refreshed refreshed mission statement. Our mission is to help organizations turn corporate purpose into real global impact. With your cause, we connect employees, nonprofits, and data using smart technology and responsible AI. This means easier collaboration, better insights, and more meaningful results for everyone involved. We're focused on making it simple for companies like you to drive positive change locally and globally through every program and partnership. And throughout today's session, keep an eye out for for the Blackbaud AI icon, the sparkles. We will be using this to indicate where throughout the solution we are embedding AI driven features to help drive efficiency and impact for our customers. And we know grantmakers are under constant pressure to scale programs without sacrificing accuracy or compliance. Managing hundreds or even thousands of applications across regions requires processes that are not only efficient but also airtight for reporting and audit purposes. You're balancing your decisions against organizational goals, regulatory requirements, and stakeholder expectations. That's why we're exploring AI capabilities. They offer the potential to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and ensure precision in compliance checks, all while enabling you to deliver impact at scale. To illustrate what this could look like in practice, here are five AI use cases currently under exploration. Application summaries at the top there. Example, a corporate foundation receives 500 applications for a global sustainability grant. AI generates summaries that highlight project objectives, requested funding, and alignment with your personal ESG or SDG goals so reviewers can quickly identify high impact and well fitting proposals. Application scoring and recommendations at on the second on the list. Example is could be, for an employee led community impact program, AI scores applications based on predefined criteria like diversity, measurable outcomes, and alignment with corporate values. It then recommends the top 20 applications for funding consideration. Workflow creation. A corporate grant manager is launching a new STEM education initiative across multiple regions. AI suggests the best way to set up that workflow, such as grouping approvals by region, automating budget checks, and sequencing compliance reviews so the process is efficient and meets your program goals as quickly as possible. And AI assisted program setup could be when creating a disaster relief grant program. AI recommends eligibility criteria, such as when nonprofits with prior disaster response experience. They could recommend application windows and require documentation based on similar past programs and your own compliance guidelines. And then finally, powerful search capabilities. With AI, an example could be during an internal audit, a corporate grant manager needs to find all applications mentioning carbon reduction submitted in the last three years. AI powered search retrieves relevant applications, attachments, and reviewer notes instantly. While we have so many ideas in store, some of which you'll see us talk more about today, we also wanna leave space for your ideas too. Towards the end of our session, we will launch a feedback survey, and one of the questions will give attendees the space to share their ideas on how questions will give attendees the space to share their ideas on how AI can help drive efficiencies and impact in their role. We are really excited to hear from our customers on this topic, so please, go ahead and answer that survey. Also, keep an eye out for our new listening icon throughout today's presentation. This icon will highlight features that originated from customer ideas or from feedback we gathered through our customer experience survey. The insights we receive from customers are invaluable, and we actively collaborate across teams to turn this feedback into meaningful product and process improvements. We focus on uncovering impactful opportunities for progress and move forward with a clear plan to help our clients spend more time making a difference. As always, we will present our roadmap to you today through three time horizons. First, we'll start with the features that are available now and have been released since we presented back in last spring. Next, we will talk about what's coming soon in our release preview. These are features that we are already working on and can't wait to get into your hands. And finally, we will round out with looking ahead at what's next for Grants Connect and at your YourCause portfolio and share some of the work we have planned for the longer term. Our roadmap centers itself around three key themes: modernized, globalized, and connected experiences. You'll see that features are aligned to one of these key themes throughout the presentation. Our features cover the entire lifecycle of your grant making programs from application to award and beyond. We will orient these features we talk about today to these core areas of use so that you have context for how they impact you during the grant life cycle. So let's get started with recently released features. And before we dive into recently released features with Meg, I want to briefly highlight new state legislation impacting YourCause solutions. Florida senate bill 700 prohibits nonprofits in Florida from accepting donations from individuals or entities tied to designated foreign countries of concern. To ensure compliance, YourCause is introducing annual do donor attestations across CSR Connect, Grants Connect, and JustGiving. Currently, these countries include China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria. Here's what this means for our solutions. In CSR Connect, users will be prompted annually to confirm residents' information and agree to compliance statements, meeting both California AD four eighty eight and Florida SB 700 requirements. In Grants Connect, the attestation will appear alongside the BBGF attestation when awards are processed by us here at YourCause through BBGF. Self processed awards by our customers remain unchanged. In both platforms, users can access additional details through expandable text in CSR Connects or help content in Grants Connect. These changes will be coming to each platform in December production releases, and we have communicated to our customers and shared FAQs through email and the YourCause community posts. As always, we're committed to helping our customers stay ahead of evolving state and federal nonprofit regulations no matter their origin so you can continue to focus on moving your missions forward. And with that, I'll pass it over to Meg. Thank you, Andrea. I'm so happy to be here to talk with you today about my favorite topic, Grants Connect. So I wanna jump right in and start talking to you about, one of our biggest initiatives that's Andrea just mentioned, and that's modernize. So let's talk about how we're gonna modernize your grant making experience. We we have introduced Form Intelligence quite recently. We've recently updated the review re review experience, and we've created faster form building and added flexibility to pick list groups and nomination programs. And we'll talk more about each of those in a moment. We've also let let's also talk about con connectivity. So grants.net budget data is now seamlessly integrated into Impact Edge. This provides you with a comprehend with comprehensive insights and analytics. And this integration allows you to make more informed decisions as well to maximize the impact of your grant. We're also showing much more information now about nonprofits in our due diligence model, which we'll talk about more in a moment as well. And as always, our health resources are always evolving and growing to support you. As you may have heard, Eurocutta has entered a new partnership with Nacional Monte de Piedad, a top financial institution based in Mexico City. This partnership is now live, so you can you can use it right now. Our clients can now donate to over 500 vetted cherries charities in Mexico, and we are quite proud to say that we are the only organization offering a partnership like this in Mexico. National Monte de Vieran manages the vetting process, facilitates both cross border and in country giving, and ensures that our that don't your donations reach Mexican based nonprofits and charities securely and efficiently. So as I mentioned, clients are already using this functionality today and enabling their employees to support causes that matter to them in Mexico. And this expansion means that your communities can connect with a broader network of organizations to strengthen your global impact as well as engagement. So let's jump right in. This this new feature that exists now is all about making it easier for grant managers to support a wider range of applicants. So, as you know, in many cases, especially with international or grassroots nonprofits, organizations may not have a government issued ID, tax ID like an EIN, like we do in The US. So with the new setting that we've built, grant managers can choose to make the tax ID field optional when applicants add their own organizations. It's a really kind of simple configuration change, but it opens the door to smoother onboarding and broader participation. You might, find it useful when or if you have a program supporting international nonprofits that operate without formal registration or a local initiative where community groups or informal organizations apply for funding. Just just as a few examples. And so by removing this barrier, grant managers can focus on the impact instead of the paperwork and ensure that their programs are accessible to all of the communities they they are serving. And another new feature that is designed for grant managers, this one is about, supporting programs that use our optional add your own organization functionality. We call it AYO for short. This allows our applicants to manually submit an organization that isn't already listed in the shared nonprofit database. Often, that's because it's it's it's new or local or, it's an international entity not yet registered in the Blackbaud verified network. When an applicant uses AYO, the system creates a new organization record. And depending on the client's configuration, that record might remain private, meaning it exists only within the client's database and is not visible to other clients. So while many AYA organizations are private, not all are. And so this this enhancement that we're talking about in this slide is really focused only on our private organizations. And until now, these records couldn't be edited once created. So we've changed that. Now grant managers can edit the name, address, and registration ID of their private organizations directly within Grants Connect. And then those updates will flow through to applications, awards, and payments, all while preserving the historical values for audit and reporting. This feature is especially valuable for global programs where regional differences and manual entry, tend to be more common. It gives the grant managers the control they need to maintain, clean, accurate records and without relying on on all sorts of workarounds and risking data inconsistency. This this is a direct response to an idea submission, and it's a great example of how user submitted ideas shape our platform. And, I'm thrilled to introduce you to our latest AI powered feature that we call Form Intelligence, which you may have heard about. This is designed to help you perfect your forms so that you can make it a better experience for your applicants or or for your reviewers. Form intelligence leverages the power of AI to provide actionable insights, helping you create forms that are not only efficient but, eventually, also aligned to your mission. This feature offers the ability to enhance your form before you publish it so that you can optimize it for your applicants as well as for your reporting downstream. So here's how it works. After you've created your form and are ready to publish, Form Intelligence will offer you a choice to see suggestions to refine your form. So first up, you're gonna see, AI powered spell check and grammar and punctuation checks for your forms. And to ensure that you look, that your form is as professional as possible right from the start, it also offers a powerful capability to check for clarity to ensure that your questions are as effective as possible. We plan to continue to involve this feature, and, eventually, the AI may may suggest that, make suggestions that about how every form every question in your form can align with your stated pillars or your impact area or ensure that your outcome reporting is as meaningful as possible. So, in short, Form Intelligence will act as your trusted assistant to help you maximize the effectiveness of your forms to make the whole process smoother for both you and your applicants. And if you'd like to activate Form Intelligence, just connect with your implementation team manager or your customer success manager. They'll guide you through a quick sign off on our gen generative AI terms of service. And once that's complete, they'll enable the feature for you. And for more details about how Blackbaud approaches AI responsibly, you can review our AI policies at blackbaud.com/intelligence for good. And another new feature that I'm I'm thrilled to tell you about, if you haven't seen it yet because it's live in the product, is our updated due diligence model. So this is a feature that our customers have been ask asking for and we're really glad to bring it to life. We've expanded the nonprofit details available in the due diligence model so grant managers can access critical information without needing to log in to Blackbaud Ver Verified Network or reach out to customer success. So now, when you open an organization's profile in the grant manager portal, you'll see attributes like vetting status, IRS codes, admin engagement, and dis disbursement details all in one place. And you can see the items on the on the slide above the slide there, for some ideas. This is something that will continue to evolve as well. And this update will help you make faster, more informed decisions about your applications and keep your workflow moving without interruptions and having to go outside the platform. Again, this this enhancement comes directly from customer feedback, so thank you. So moving on. So grant managers told us that they needed a field where users can pick multiple options and assign a value to each. So that's exactly what this new feature that we call pick list groups delivers. And just for a primer, a quick difference between pick lists and pick list groups, a pick list allows you to choose one or more options, but a pick list group allows you to choose options and assign a number or a percent to each, all in one field. And the reason why this matters is you don't have to then juggle extra fields or do math, within your form. So you'll get you get cleaner forms, you have built in validation, and you have better reporting. So, for example, you might ask on your form, how how will your budget support community programs? And the options might be youth education with a value of 40%, food assistance, 35%, mental health, 25%. So, you can see that one field would then capture it all ensuring the totals add up and data is ready for analysis. And just taking a a little closer look at pick list groups in the screenshot above, the pick list group field captures both the selected programs and the allocation. So as I mentioned, ensuring that critically ensuring that the total equals a 100. Grant managers can also hide options per form, convert existing, multi select pick lists into pick list groups, and use the field in workflow automation as well as conditional logic. The responses will show up cleanly in PDFs and reports, making it easier to analyze and share. So compared to field groups, pick list groups are more efficient, easier to configure, and better suited for dynamic data collection. They're ideal when you need structured input without the overhead of building and managing multiple fields. So onto, some functionality we did for reviews. This feature was also inspired directly by ideas submitted by our grant managers, and we're truly grateful for your insights and your feedback. This feature addresses a common challenge that when multiple reviewers access the same application at once, especially if you're in a if you have a large volunteer based team or something similar, it can sometimes lead to over reviewing some applications while others are missed entirely. So now on the application's view page, grant managers can see exactly how many reviewers have started and completed each form. So, for example, it will say two out of four completed. This gives instant clarity on review progress. And if a reviewer or when a reviewer clicks, on the start form button, the system checks whether the required number of reviews have already been met or will be met if the in progress forms are submitted. If so, a smart confirmation model appears, gently asking, are you sure? And explaining that enough reviewers are already working on it. It helps reviewers make informed decisions, will reduce wasted effort, and ensures that every application gets the attention it deserves without unnecessary duplication. And then now let's take a look at a feature that is all about saving time and making your form smarter. Conditional logic for custom data tables allows grant managers to build dynamic forms without the headache of manually entering hundreds or even thousands of values. Instead of stringing together long chains of or conditions, you can now reference a single data table for efficiency. So whether you're validating a field, showing or hiding sections, or setting the values, the system will check if the applicant's response is found in the table and applies your logic instantly. And so we see this as especially powerful for use cases like validating entries against a list of approved departments or codes or something like managing eligibility based on documentation requirements. Those are just a couple examples. And because the logic is tied to the data table, any updates made to this data table will be automatically up reflected in your forms. So that's a big win. And now, continuing to move on, Grants Connect now has more flexibility for you when you build your nomination forms. So you can now tailor the header and the description text in the nominee information section to match your program's language and tone. So instead of a fixed message, which is what we used to have, you can decide what the applicants see. For example, your description might say something like, this is the individual being nominated for the grant. If the nomination is accepted, they'll be invited to continue the application. It's a simple change that makes forms clearer and more in line with your program requirements and also helps you, keep the tone of your program in keeping with, your own goals. And, so brand managers also have asked for more control over their merged documents. And now and now they have it in the product. You can add headers and footers to your document templates. So when documents are generated, the text appears on every page. So why this why does this matter? It helps you add clarity and context. So you can include program names, instructions, or disclaimers across all of the pages. It has simple formatting. So you can do bold, italics. You can align it. You can put links. No coding required. It also helps you, maintain consistent branding across your programs because every page will look polished and aligned with your look and feel. This idea also comes straight from the idea portal. So thank you for your work, to help shape the product. Now this recent feature in Grants Connect is designed to help you manage your email communications. This feature was developed in response, again, to several ideas submitted to our Grants Connect idea bank. So thank you for that as well. Our new email deliverability status feature allows you to see, whether or not your emails were delivered. This means you can quickly understand what happened to your emails and take action when needed without having to take the extra step, which I know you had to previously, to reach out to Grants Connect support. So, now you can view all your emails. You can conveniently filter by notification type, subject, and delivery status. And you can even preview the actual email. This will help ensure that you have all the information you need about your emails right at your fingertips. We believe these enhancements will save grant managers a significant amount of time by reducing the need to contact support. And now I'm gonna pass it off to Sarah to walk you through some additional exciting updates. Sarah? Thank you so much, Meg. Most of you that know me recognize me from our monthly customer admin workshops, but I also get to partner closely with the product team. It's super exciting to see all these new features that have come out, and get to help you turn those into practical wins for your program. So thank you so much, Meg. I also have the privilege today to share a snapshot of some of the recently released items from Impact Edge. However, as previously mentioned, you don't wanna miss the full Impact Edge product update briefing tomorrow, November 20. Make sure you go over the doc section on the right hand side of your screen where you can find a link to register for that session. There are some sneak peeks of what's coming that, I feel like we've already doubled the product in this year, but you will be blown away by what's happening. So please please please register for that and go see that in addition to this one. As you probably already know, Impact Edge is available to all of our grants connect grant managers. On our grants overview dashboard, the data is centered on where your grant applicants are located. The dashboard gives you broad information on applicants, programs, and your awards. You will also see that it's newer this year, budgets. So you have a comprehensive dashboard for your grant's budget data, and then there's also an additional filter for you to report by grant program cycles, on the grants overview dashboard. So make sure you're heading over there to check that out. Or if you don't have access to it, talk to your salesperson so that they can show you a little demo of that. It's great to be able to bring all the data from Grants Connect and CSR Connect all in one place in Impact Edge. Next, we've got our charity discovery tool, which streamlines your nonprofit research by surfacing detailed charity profiles. You've got program data and impact metrics all in one interactive dashboard. The charity discovery tool helps CSR professionals identify and evaluate nonprofits, whether by region or cause area and population, and this is served by using True Impact and candid data integrations. With integrated program metrics, transparency seals, predicted cost per outcome, and community investment data, you can make faster data backed funding and partnership decisions and understand the impact your programs are making. Let's talk about strategic research and how easy that is. You can navigate into an interactive map to locate charities by either the primary address or program region. You can apply filters based on Candid's philanthropic classification system, including subject and population levels. You've got outcome based insight. So you can view predicted cost per outcome powered by True Impact, enabling a shift from giving to investing in actual measurable results. Imagine the storytelling that opens up. And, of course, you've got transparency and trust. Access, candid seals of transparency, and detailed community investment data, including donations, awards, and volunteer hours. It's been very interesting to see we had an idea of what the charity discovery tool was gonna be, but it has been so cool to see how our clients have taken that to the next level and made it their own of what they're doing with it. So make sure you jump in and see that. Last but not least on Impact Edge, just a little snapshot. We've got our goals and metrics feature, which helps you define success and track project progress with precision. You can set your goals for giving or volunteering or grants, or even combine initiatives. And you can monitor that those engagement trends as soon as you log in. Go right to your goals and metrics. How far am I onto this goal? The dashboards are customizable and allow filtering by time frames, HR attributes, and it's easy to align your goals with your pillars and measure this impact. This empowers your teams to be more intentional and data driven in your strategies. Next, I'm gonna send you over to Andrea for what's next on our road map. Thank you, Sarah. I'll offer one clarifying note that in this session, we are not covering every new feature and enhancement in recent upcoming months. Instead, we're offering highlights of the most impactful items. For detailed review of what's included in our regular releases, I recommend checking out the what's new section in our help content available at the grant Grants Connect help center and attending the fabulous workshops put on by our customer success enablement team members like Sarah. Let's now transition to what's coming soon in Grants Connect. In the next six months, we have several new innovations rolling out across our three themes. We will be enabling modern features like built in file uploads for easier document sharing and new payment pathways to support a broader range of giving use cases. We'll be leveraging AI to power translated applicant responses and build out a multitude of connected experiences, including expedited giving, Sky APIs, and a DocuSign integration. I'm going to pass it off to Meg to cover these exciting new features in more detail. Thanks again, Andrea. So as you may have heard, this year, we're giving our APIs a major upgrade. By moving our Grants Connect APIs into Blackbaud's Sky API platform. So this is big. This shift makes our APIs more robust, easier to use, and it positions Grants Connect within the Blackbaud's developer ecosystem. This will open the door to faster integrations and new ways to meet your unique program needs. So what makes Sky API so special? It's secure, standards based way for systems to communicate and share data. So effortless connections and real time visibility. So imagine pulling Grants Connect data straight into your accounts payable system or getting up to the minute updates on grant status and program impact. Grants Connect Sky API is currently in a customer technical preview phase. So this means that the API documentation is available to anyone with a BBID, and those that participate in our pilot project can be set up to make calls to this API. So what's next? So soon, we're launching a pilot with select clients to let them try out the API and to help us prioritize it to future capability. And it's important to notice that your feedback will do to note that your feedback will directly shape what comes next. And just digging in a little bit, let's take a closer look at what is available on the new API endpoints. So this is what you'll be able to do today. At the start, we focused on the areas that matter most to you, and each endpoint is designed to make managing your data simple and secure. So of all of our endpoints, payments is the most complete. So far, it supports both read and write. So that means that you can view payment details and make updates to your payments directly through the API. This will give you full flexibility to to keep your systems in sync. The other endpoints you see on this slide, budgets, funding sources, and in kind contributions are also available now, but in read only mode, which means you can pull the data and and look at it, and integrate it into your systems. These provide secure access to important financial data, and it lays the groundwork for future enhancements that we have planned. The rest of the endpoints that are available now is is also about getting data out, as we mentioned. That's intentional. So, in the first re release, we're focused on reporting and analytics. And so, all of these endpoints are read only for now. But you'll be able to pull data on applications, on your tags, awards, applicants, and form responses. And this will be perfect for building dashboards and syncing with internal systems. We're just simply getting a clearer view of your grants data, possibly in your own applications. But looking ahead, we plan to add write cap capabilities. But we wanna make sure that we're building what matters most to you and your use cases. So that is why your feedback about the Sky APIs is critical. So during the pilot, you can tell us how you plan to work with this data so we can prioritize the right features for you. We'd love to have you join our pilot group. And if you're interested, let your CSM know. We believe these endpoints will help you reduce manual work and give you more control over your data to help you focus on running your programs. And then moving on from Sky API. Grants Connect already offers powerful translation capabilities in which and for form questions, program descriptions, system emails, and custom emails, which can be translated into more than 25 languages. These features help clients deliver localized experiences for applicants as well as reviewers across regions to support compliance and usability. So we're taking the next step. Coming in 2026, applicant responses will be automatically translated into the grant manager's default language. This means that reviewers can read and report on applications in a consistent format without browser extensions or manual workarounds. This is also a direct response to what international teams told us they need to work smarter and faster. And this enhancement is just the beginning. We're building towards full platform translation, user level language settings, and auto translated emails, making Grants Connect a truly multilingual solution for global grantmaking. Another new feature that we are working on is, one that will allow you to upload files like PDFs, images, or Excel documents right into Grants Connect. So whether you're building a form, writing program guidance, or even just updating a rich text field, you can insert documents directly and reuse them across your programs. So you might use this for things like embedding, instructions into your application forms or linking program policies or eligibility criteria. You can reuse or for reusing standard documents across multiple forms and communications. This feature will be supported across all of the, WYSI what we call WYSIWYG, what you see, what you get, editors and which means it's easy to use. And it in include a manager friendly interface for file management. It's designed to save you time and will give you more control over how you share information with applicants and reviewers. It's another idea. It's another great example of how your ideas are helping shape the platform. And Grants Connect, as you know, currently supports, e signature functionality primarily for applicants signing forms during the application process. And while this serves many programs well, clients have consistently asked for more. More flexibility, more control, and more advanced capabilities. And that's why we're moving to a native integration with DocuSign. This upgrade isn't just about enabling grant managers to sign their own forms, although that is one important use case. It's also about unlocking broader, more capable signing experience across the entire grant life cycle. With DocuSign, Grants Connect plans to support things like embedded signing for both applicants and grant managers, multi signer workflows with real time status tracking, legally binding signatures that meet global compliance standards, I know that's important to you, and secure storage of signed documents as well as audit certificates. And as you know, DocuSign is a trusted world class solution known for its security, legal enforceability, and ease of use. So by integrating it directly into Grants Connect, we're giving clients the advanced signature capabilities that they've been asking for without requiring them to leave the platform. This enhancement will streamline your workflows, reduce friction, and support programs with complex legal or regulatory requirements. And then looking ahead to 2026, we're looking at creating new opportunities for grant managers to expand what's possible with payment processing. Today, donor advised funds or DAS, they're excellent for charitable giving, but they don't cover grants that include donor benefits, like event tickets, gala tables, or sponsorships. Our upcoming enhancements that we're working on will open a new payment lane for these scenarios, enabling you to process scholarships, sponsorships, and other non dApp eligible grants with ease. This evolution is about giving you more flexibility and reducing manual work so you can focus on driving your impact. So I'm also excited to share a little bit about the work we've been doing to transform the giving experience for everyone across the YourCause solutions, including CSR admins, nonprofits, as well as employee donors. So throughout 2025, we've been building and piloting some really exciting features that will come to general availability in 2026. This will include a direct donor detail integration between Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT solution and our Blackbaud verified network portal, which used to be known as MPO Connect. These expedited giving capabilities will speed up donation to disbursement timelines by over 95% for over a 100,000 US based non profits. Then we'll also have a processing portal for your cause admins that will give you increased visibility and configuration access over your processing details, which will empower you with the clarity and control you need to drive quick action and further speed up your disbursement timelines. This innovation philosophy has had a core mission to ensure our innovation is beneficial to nonprofits as well as to you and your employees. And we cannot wait to bring these powerful capabilities to you in early twenty twenty six. And with that, I wanna thank you for your time and attention, and I'm gonna pass this back to Andrea to talk to us more about some of our longer term plans. Thank you again for joining us today. Thanks so much, Meg. And now for our final section for our road map conversation, looking ahead. This section will represent what we are pursuing in the longer term for Grants Connect. For our future vision, we are focusing on how we can make managing your programs more efficient while giving you the tools to tell your story of impact with more clarity, precision, and ease than ever before. Leveraging emerging intelligent technologies, our long term vision centers around concepts like making setting up a grant program feel more like a conversation that starts with goals and outcomes from the beginning, allowing aligning each decision point and configuration with impact in mind. We are reimagining programmatic setup in Grants Connect, giving you the tools to design workflows and forms that align to your impact goals and create efficiencies and clarity. Leveraging a chat like experience, we will turn setting up a new program from a configuration into a conversation that starts with the end goal in mind. We will continue to evolve form intelligence, which you heard about today, and innovate with AI to help you create an applicant experience that is efficient and well structured for you and your nonprofit partners, helping you get strong, mission lined applications. With workflow setup, we will turn complexity into interactive visualizations, a mapped experience that is intuitive, saves time, and helps you drive greater impact. This includes an elegant interface, breaking down complex tasks for easy easy navigation, a guided experience that provides clear, guidance to prevent mistakes, and enhanced transparency. It visualizes data connections to understand your programs at a glance. Throughout our work, we're hyper focused on creating connections throughout your products to help you tell a bigger, bolder story of impact. This includes detailed reporting and visualizations in Impact Edge, drilling down into the impact of your grant programs, but also providing the unified data structure to tell your holistic story of impact across employee giving, volunteering, and groups if you also leverage CSR Connect. We're bringing in more trusted nonprofit data into Blackbaud verified network and ImpactEdge with partners like True Impact and Candid, helping you discover and assess charity partners right within our systems. This includes an upcoming impact assessment tool powered by True Impact that will help nonprofits define their outcomes through an efficient experience that doesn't burden them with complicated questions while still delivering CSR and grant professionals unparalleled insight and access into predictive cost for outcomes data. These reporting and data layers create the ecosystem of information needed to power next generation AI capabilities, which will give you the tools to uncover deep data insights and define your community investment outcomes in seconds versus hours or even days of data extraction and analysis. Across efficiencies in program setup and connected outcomes reporting, powerful Sky API capabilities will extend the power of Grants Connect and create even more possibilities for you and the stakeholders that support you in your work. Sky API unlocks the possibilities you may not have imagined, giving you the power to access and update nearly any piece of data within your grant program instantly and at scale. Think of the ways you could leverage this. Automate workflows, integrate systems, update permissions, query applications, and create entirely new efficiencies that transform how you manage grants. I'm so excited about the path we are on in Grants Connect and can't wait to keep you informed in future product update briefings about our progress on these innovations. With that, I'd like to pass it to Sarah to round out today's presentation. Thanks, Andrea. Just so you know, a a survey will be popping up shortly, and I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to share your thoughts about the presentation today. You've heard a lot about our AI, developments that are going on, but we wanna hear your ideas. When you think grant program management and AI together, what makes sense to you? Please take a moment to fill that out because your feedback helps us shape future sessions and future features and makes them even more valuable for you if we hear your voice in those developments. Speaking of your voice, we know that trust and security are a top priority for all of our customers. I'm super excited to introduce the new Blackbaud trust center to you. It's a centralized hub for all things related to security. At trust.blackbaud.com, you can find audit reports. You can see the SOC and PCI documentation that are audit reports. You can see security white papers. There's even a dedicated knowledge base for your frequently asked questions about security. You can see Blackbaud security credentials. You have self serve access to information for your risk assessments and your due diligence. I don't know about you, but when a long paperwork comes out or lots of questions come out, it kinda makes me cringe. I am not the person to do that, so I love that we have this all in one place from people who thrive on that to answer those kinds of questions for us. So you can already access the trust center using your Blackbaud ID. No extra credentials are needed. If you are not a customer yet, you can create a Blackbaud ID and see certain information. And this resource is designed to make your security reviews faster and easier, reduce the time spent on due diligence, and provide you with direct access to the information you need whenever you need it. It's part of our commitment to transparency and supporting your organization's security needs throughout your journey with Blackbaud. Let's talk about community. I love seeing you over in our product communities. They're a great way to stay connected with each other and with us. Some examples of what you'll find include, like, helpful guides and best practices to support your programs during times like disaster relief and other moments that matter throughout the year. We have the discussion section where you can connect with your peers, ask questions, and share insights to learn from each other. It's so helpful to be able to talk with others who use the same exact programs you do. You can also find the events, including our monthly client admin workshops and other events around the world where we can see each other in person, like the social impact summit coming up. We also have subject matter subject matter expert resources where you can get tips, trends, and thought leadership directly from our experts. And last but not least, my favorite section, ideas. I spend a lot of time with Meg pouring through the ideas that y'all submit and also voting on ideas and submitting them myself to help influence these product road maps. So like I said, you can not only share your own ideas, but you can also vote on other people's ideas that would help you out as well. I do wanna take one moment to talk about our customer experience model. It's designed to pull everything altogether. You've heard about so much, today, but, really, at the end of the day, our customer success manager's priority is to help you reach your goals. If you haven't already, make sure you have a regular meeting scheduled with your CSM. Share your goals for the year as well as your upcoming programs and any updates to your grant programs you've made. We also have those admin workshops for new releases, best practices, reporting, and that helps make sure you're using, our capabilities to their full extent and getting what you need out of them. One of my favorite parts of the experience model for Grants Connect specifically is the applicant support we provide. That way, you spend more time with your community and with the nonprofits and less time troubleshooting or answering applicant questions. Whether it's troubleshooting or program impressions, our team is ready to be there for your applicants. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it. We're gonna go off stage. And, if there are a couple questions I believe we couldn't answer today, we will get back to you. So don't feel like we're missing anything. But we appreciate joining you joining us today, and please take a moment to fill out the survey.